1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a nonaqueous ink composition for ink jet recording and an ink jet recording method using the same.
2. Related Art
An ink jet recording method to record an image and letters on a water absorptive recording medium such as paper using minute ink droplets which are discharged from the nozzle of the ink jet recording head has been known hitherto. As an ink used in such an ink jet recording method, an aqueous ink which uses water as the main solvent has been widely adopted. However, in recent years, the ink jet recording method has come to be used for recording to various kinds of recording media in various fields. In particular, from a viewpoint of supporting a printing method in which a low absorption recording medium is targeted, instead of an aqueous ink of the related art, a nonaqueous ink which does not substantially contain water as a solvent has been developed.
As the printing method targeting a low absorption recording medium, gravure printing for soft packing material, flexography printing for sanitary products, silk screen printing for metal plates, ink jet printing for indoor and outdoor advertisements, and the like are commonly known. However, it is common that the nonaqueous ink used for these printing methods uses solvents such as toluene, ethyl acetate, methyl ethyl ketone, methyl isobutyl ketone, and cyclohexane which are class-2 organic solvents, handling is difficult due to obligations such as setting the environmental concentration, installing local exhaust facilities from smells and the like, or performing regular medical examinations arise, thereby a nonaqueous ink with higher health and safety properties has been desired.
From such a viewpoint, a nonaqueous ink which contains solvents, which are not class-2 organic solvents, such as glycol ether acetates such as ethylene glycol monobutyl ether acetate and cyclic esters such as γ-butyrolactone has been proposed (for example, see JPA-2005-200469).
However, since the solvent included in a nonaqueous ink such as the above has a poor ability to dissolve the front surface of a low absorption recording medium, there are cases in which the fixing property of the image which is recorded onto the low absorption recording medium is inferior. In addition, since the ability of the low absorption recording medium to absorb a solvent is poor, when an image is recorded onto the low absorption recording medium using a nonaqueous ink such as the above, there are cases where the front surface drying properties are significantly reduced. In addition, in a nonaqueous ink such as the above, there are cases where smudging of the recorded image becomes prominent depending on the type of low absorption recording medium that is used.